4 comments:

My first memories of "luxury" perfume came from my Mother's Chanel #5 and the bottle of JOY my Dad sent her from overseas while he was stationed in Vietnam. She also liked EA Blue Grass. I thought Blue Grass & Chanel smelled really pretty but my 5 year old nose didn't get JOY. Now I couldn't imagine not having a bottle. As with most little girls, I loved to watch her getting ready to go out & sneaking a spray when she wasn't looking. My little sister on the other hand didn't understand the idea of luxury. She dumped my Mother's Chanel #5 dusting powder down the drain because she wanted the box. That was the day I almost became an only child. :-)

I will travel back in time...far away in yesteryears when things had this particular silver lining of magical possibilities, fairies hiding in the bushes...Spring melted Winter coat. I'm about 8 years old. I made my First Communion at church, celebration is the mood of the day. I received a small bottle of perfume, the liquid inside smells divinely good and I carry the bottle around, put it in the light of the sun because it Shines! I feel grown up and special. I will learn few days after that it is the smell of lily-of-the-valley and have been given a mini of Diorissimo. Since then muguet will always have a very very special meaning to me, spiritual as well as mundane :) thank you for letting me go back and tell this story, it's such a good feeling ! - V

my earliest memories of "luxury" perfume are of my Mother getting ready to go out when I was a little girl she always wore a white Parigi blouse with pearls, before leaving she would spritz herself with Lanvin's arpege, from the famous black Lanvin boule. Arpege complemented my mum"s effervescent personality and dark sultry looks perfectly. My mum died in 1996 at the age of 57. Sometimes at christmas I buy myself a bottle of arpege to pay tribute to my mum who I miss terribly at Christmas, the emblem on the front of the bottle is a mother bending down to grasp her little daughter's hands, the gold image on the bottle always draws a tear to my eye.When I was nineteen and working for Austin Reed in Manchester, I used to go into Kendals and felt like Alice in Wonderland wandering around the perfumery and cosmetics dept. I discovered Patou's '1000' and fell in love with this exotic perfume which evoked memories of childhood holidays in South Devon, where as a little girl i used to buy devon violets which was green and came in a tiny bottle with a pixie sat on the stopper. Patou's '1000' perfume epitomised a delicious rare exclusivity to me, I felt like I had discovered hidden treasure when i first discovered it, I continued to buy it, then one day I went into Kendals and a sales lady said they didn,t sell it, I was devastated and the sales lady said lots of customers had gone to her counter demanding a '1000' and they weren't armed robbers. With righteous indignation I vowed to boycott the store there and then, without my '1000' I went back to work, a sympathetic colleague advised me to cartier's must de cartier, which I did, it was a special edition bottle in a small burgundy leather case, it resembled an expensive cigarette lighter and had a lovely musky smell, I also discovered Ungaro's Diva around this time and a perfume called Bijan which was available as a small glass pendant bottle, when I think about these 'lost' perfumes of my youth I get a warm fuzzy feeling, but nothing compared to Patou's '1000' which is as exclusive today as it was twenty one years ago, I'm forty now and was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2004, after a dire prognosis, I have defied medical opinion and astounded my doctor, I,m still healthy and here six years after the diagnosis, and subsequent surgery, chemo and radiotherapy, the luxury perfumes of my youth inspire and comfort me